


And gentle wolves in England now a-bed

by alltoseek, feroxargentea



Category: due South
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-11
Updated: 2016-03-11
Packaged: 2018-05-23 09:37:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6112480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alltoseek/pseuds/alltoseek, https://archiveofourown.org/users/feroxargentea/pseuds/feroxargentea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>And gentle wolves in England now a-bed</i><br/><i>Shall feel kinda crappy that they missed the fun.</i><br/>-- Buck Frobisher’s March 11th speech, as lipread by Diefenbaker.</p><p>Ptarmigan, hares, lemmings, Chicagoans, they’re all the same. Wait till they’re distracted, then take a silent step forward. Become one with the tundra. Become one with the holding cell. Step, freeze. Step, freeze. This isn’t a game Chicagoans ever win.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And gentle wolves in England now a-bed

**Author's Note:**

> For alltoseek, who requested "more Diefenbaker". The plot is, of necessity, somewhat curtailed*.

* * *

 

“What department do I work for, Fraser? Huh? Huh?”

Fraser knows a rhetorical question when he hears one. He continues peering through the windows of the Ellerville Pool Club.

“Serious Crimes, that’s what,” Ray says. “Rape and extortion and murder, _those_ are serious crimes. Barking dogs are not serious crimes. Barking dogs are a serious pain in the ass.”

He’s pissed, and for once it’s not entirely unjustified. Even Lieutenant Welsh looked sheepish when he sent them out here to investigate a noise disturbance complaint.

“Well, they don’t generally bark without cause,” Fraser says, pulling at a loose piece of fiberboard and trying not to sound placating, because Ray will get even more pissed if he thinks he’s being placated. “Persistent barking could be a case of neglect or abandonment.”

“Yeah, whatever. I don’t hear no barking now. And where’s Dief, anyway? The one time we need him, his furry butt’s gone AWOL.”

“He volunteered to cover the building’s rear exit. I believe he had to cut short his visit to Francesca’s baby shower to be here for this.”

Ray isn’t often surprised into silence but this is one of those times. He jams his hands into his jacket pockets and goes back to pacing the alley, once more, twice more. On the third time he must have run out of trash to kick at because he takes a running jump at the door instead, which bursts open under his boots.

“Ray, we don’t have a—” Fraser begins.

“Hey, look at that,” Ray says happily. “Door just blew open. Windy city, huh?”

 

* * *

 

Diefenbaker waits behind the pool club’s garbage cans and then waits some more, unperturbed. Time must be passing, but that isn’t a thing he’s good at measuring with any exactitude, especially here in the city, contaminated as it is with incandescence and sodium glow. In any case he’s never really understood the human obsession with timekeeping. Some days his packmates hustle him past olfactory wonderlands, tapping their watches; other days they burn half a morning in the car for no reason he can fathom.

He thinks it’s been a while since they broke into this building, though. The pigeons on its roof were startled into a flurry of flight, but they’ve long since settled back down on the eaves. He turns from the lamp-lit sky and fixes his gaze on the pool club’s back door, deep in shadow.

He’s only half wolf, but he has a wolf’s full patience for the long game. He squats on his haunches and he waits.

 

* * *

 

“And why would he even go to a baby shower, anyway?” Ray says, dismissing the stacks of pint glasses with a last clattering kick and vaulting back over the bar. “Did he take a gift? Mouthful of kibble?”

Fraser finishes his survey of the pool tables and straightens up. “Not that I’m aware of, no. I assume he went to offer Francesca his moral support.”

“See, that’s where you always go wrong, thinking the best of people – people and wolves. That don’t get you nowhere. He musta gone for the treats. Smart wolf.”

Fraser says nothing. There’s no denying that Diefenbaker had reappeared looking rumpled and well-fed and smelling of various feminine perfumes.

“Hey, you find anything yet?” Ray says. “C’mon, get with the licking already. We don’t got all day.”

Fraser quirks an eyebrow, schooling the rest of his expression to blankness.

“Not me, Frase, the _crime_ scene. Seriously, we need clues here. I got real cases to work, gotta get this one wrapped up.”

“Duly noted.” He can tell that Ray’s amused, though, and he suspects his innocent face is no longer quite as efficient as it used to be. “I’m sorry to disappoint you but we may have to rely on non-gustatory data here. There are rather too many communicable diseases to be found in canine feces.”

“Canine f...? Aw, shi-i-it.” Ray lifts one foot and starts wiping it frantically across the sticky brown carpet tiles.

“On the bright side,” Fraser continues, “it does, along with the specks of dried blood on the table legs, add credence to the theory that the Ellervilles have been using these premises for illegal purposes. Specifically, dog fights.”

“Hey, hey, no, I don’t need no dog fights. Fights mean betting, that’s a given. That transfer to Vecchio’s division, I gotta look good for that. I gotta look _sparkly_. We peg this case as illegal bookmaking, Organized Crime are gonna grab it off of us, and that’s if the Feds don’t grab it first.”

“Well, Ray, a few smears of excrement, however fragrant, hardly constitute conclusive evidence of a gambling ring. I’d be inclined to say—”

“Nothing! Don’t you say _nothing_ to Welsh about this, okay? Not a word. We keep this case.”

“But I—”

“ _Sparkly_ , Frase.”

“Understood.”

 

* * *

 

Every animal born to wide open spaces knows that light travels faster than sound. As the pool club’s back door crashes open and a man barrels out, the sight hits Diefenbaker before the vibrations can reach his paws or pummel at the remains of his eardrums.

The visual neural pathway, however, is slower than the auditory. It takes Dief hundredths of a second extra to process the data, to send the right message to the bunched muscles of his hindquarters, to whip his spine into extension, to leap.

For this man, a few hundredths of a second are not enough. He flings himself at the far wall and grabs its top layer of brickwork but is hauled back, shrieking. Dief clamps his jaws more securely around the man’s pant leg and waits for his packmates to catch up.

Something is wrong in this place, he can tell. Something is very wrong. The man’s clothes stink of dog – several dogs, dirty and frightened – but there’s something else here too. Something nagging at Dief’s memory. It will come to him. He waits.

 

* * *

 

Fraser sits on the steps of the pool club, waiting for Animal Control to show up with crates and gauntlets and catch poles. Two steps down, the guy who’d made it as far as the back yard is handcuffed to the railings. He’s still refusing to say anything but “no comment”, refusing to give any explanation for the twenty or so dogs Fraser and Ray found chained up in the basement, or for the crates of puppies.

Fraser watches Ray lean into the GTO as he talks to Dispatch on the radio. It’s unlikely they’ll be able to prove much beyond animal neglect, the penalties for which are trifling. He sighs and scratches Dief behind the ears. Maybe their suspect will crumble and confess. Maybe not. You can’t win them all.

 

* * *

 

Apartment life is boring, and Diefenbaker is bored. He tries snuffling under the front door, just in case, but it’s been another slow news day in central Chicago. No herds of caribou crossing the city en route from tundra to more tundra. Not a solitary lost lemming. Mitzi the poodle from 305 has trotted past on her way for her walk, but that’s all.

Next he sniffs the shoes stacked to dry by the radiator. There’d been something good on Ray’s boots when he’d come home tonight, but it’s muted now, almost wiped out by the artificial stench of pine disinfectant, an insult to conifers everywhere.

Third stop: bedroom door. Dief can sense muffled sounds from behind it, plus the odors of raw sweat and a whole lot else, which means his packmates will be occupied with each other for a while yet. Perfect. He heads for the kitchen. Ben had a successful hunt earlier and brought back a whole pizza to share before storing the remains in the cold cache. Mmmmm, _pizza_.

Dief paws open the cache, pulls out what’s left of the prey, and wolfs a slice down. It’s best when it’s fresh from the hunt, its blood still hot, but it’s good chilled too. (Hopefully Ben will think Ray slipped out for a midnight snack. Hopefully Ray will _let_ him think that. They have a good thing going here, the three of them, and Ray will do a surprising amount to keep it that way.)

Second slice of pizza, gone. Third slice, gone. There’s something else nagging at Dief’s mind, something important, but mainly it’s just PIZZA PIZZA PIZZA, until the last piece is chewed and swallowed and he’s left salivating onto the kitchen floor, and finally—now that the food has stopped shouting at him—his memory kicks in.

Right: the city pound, where all those dogs were taken. Gotta go check out the pound while its keepers are busy sleeping.

He drops the pizza box in the trash (he is Canadian, after all, and there’s no need to be a litterbug) and then he pads over to the window, opens the catch with his teeth, and jumps out onto the fire escape.

 

* * *

 

**Interview with Animal Control officer Bernice Kelner**

The Center ain’t usually manned past seven p.m., no, but the place was overflowing last night. We hadn’t gotten any of the new dogs rehomed or fostered yet. I wasn’t rostered for an overnight, but you gotta do what you gotta do. We had twenty new adults impounded, plus three dozen puppies, most of ’em too young for flea dip, and then there was all the paperwork – well, I don’t gotta tell you guys about paperwork.

So about midnight I opened the garage door a few feet to go chuck some bags in the garbage. The yard’s floodlit, ten-foot walls, safe enough. I ain’t stupid, nothing shoulda gotten in there. But when I go back inside, there’s this big white dog – husky mostly, looks like – sitting right in front of the cages, right where we’d put the craziest of the new dogs, the one we couldn’t do nothing with. Pure pit bull or near as dammit. He’d had something in his mouth the whole time, his jaws clamped round it. Hell, you try getting a pit bull to drop something it don’t wanna drop.

So the husky looks at this dog and makes this weird whiny kind of a growl. Kinda gave me the willies. And the pit bull, it takes a couple steps forward and drops what it’s been holding right by the wire, like it’s been whipped. Chew toy, that’s all. The white dog grabs it, scoots for the garage door. I got hold of the catch pole by then, but I got no chance. He’s out the door and gone.

 

* * *

 

Diefenbaker is dozing on the couch, the strange-smelling dog toy by his side, when a sudden draft wakes him. It’s his packmates, on their way to the bathroom. Wait, nope, scratch that. He lifts his head to check and sees pale fur stuck on end as if in permanent fear/threat mode. It’s just Ray, trailing a thick cloud of Ben-smell.

Dief snorts in amusement, and the snort makes Ray turn. He clocks the open window first, then the pizza box sticking out of the trash can. He darts to the kitchenette, where he shoves the box further into the trash ( _good_ human, well-trained human) but then seems to get distracted, crouching low, scanning the floor. He’s wasting his time; there’s no vomit to be found. Dief is not the sort of wolf who’d leave nutritious pizza-puke lying around. By the time Ray gives up and starts toward the open window, Ben has wandered in, scratching his chest and smelling as much of Ray as Ray does of him.

A certain amount of shouting and arm-waving ensues, which Dief waits out patiently, agreeing at intervals to whatever they might be demanding. (No, he won’t go out at night again? No, he won’t keep forcing the window lock? They’re pointing at the fire escape, not the trash. That’s okay. He’ll just keep forcing the lock.)

He gives them a minute to let them think they’ve settled the point, and then he picks up the toy bone and holds it out to Ben, who takes it and stares at it for some time ( _stupid_ human) before thinking to lift it to his nose and take a sniff.

At least _one_ of them has his head in the game.

 

* * *

 

“So you found this, uh, this plastic dog toy,” Lieutenant Welsh says, not giving so much as a glance to Ray’s paperwork.

“Yes, sir.”

“Just lying around.”

“Yes, sir.”

“On the ground.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you picked it up.”

“Yes, sir.”

“But you didn’t think to look at it till this morning.”

“No, sir.”

Fraser coughs politely and intervenes. “There was of course the matter of several dozen abused and injured canines to attend to, not to mention the necessity of preserving the crime scene, and naturally Detective Kowalski and I were—”

“But when you did look,” Welsh says, impervious, “you immediately recognized the substance concealed within said toy to be a Schedule One drug, and you returned promptly to the scene to secure the remaining boxes of toys and log them with Evidence.”

“Yes, sir,” Ray says. He’s still gazing fixedly at the far wall.

Welsh tosses the paperwork back across his desk. “I imagine you have work to be doing, Detective, Constable. Feel free to go do it.”

 

* * *

 

“Dief! Dief! Dief! Dief!”

Diefenbaker isn’t deaf. He isn’t deaf at all. It’s just that everything _shouts_ at him all the time (the barrage of scents, the vibrations from the floorboards, the draft across his tongue, the darting of a mouse in the corner), and sometimes—what with all that shouting—he doesn’t hear too good.

The suspect’s fear, that’s audible, though. The drops of sweat trickling down to his hairline, they’re thundering like spring-melt waterfalls. He still stinks of dog hair and feces. And while Dief doesn’t recognize many human words, he’s pretty sure he saw Ben say “pound”.

“Dief! Dief! _Diefenbaker!_ ”

He turns and snuffles his muzzle into Ben’s hand. Okay, sure, he’ll keep an eye on the suspect. No problem. No need to shout.

He watches Ben leave, watches the door snap shut. The hunt is on.

Ptarmigan, hares, lemmings, Chicagoans, they’re all the same. Wait till they’re distracted, then take a silent step forward. Become one with the tundra. Become one with the holding cell. Step, freeze. Step, freeze. This isn’t a game Chicagoans ever win.

 

* * *

 

“So you just, what? Asked him nice?”

Fraser opens his eyes wide, assumes his best _Mounties-never-lie_ face, and says “Yes, Ray.” Wry looks from Ray are always worth that little extra trouble.

For once, however, Fraser’s telling the truth. He’s been nothing but polite to the Ellerville perp. Good Cop all the way. Admittedly he left him alone with Diefenbaker for five minutes, by which time the man had shoved his chair away and reared as far back from the table as his handcuffed wrists would let him, gasping “Get that dog away from me! I’ll give you all my contacts, I’ll sign a statement, just take him away!”

But none of that counts, because Dief was nowhere near him. Dief was sitting exactly where Fraser left him, thumping his tail on the floor in the friendliest of manners. And besides, Dief isn’t the Bad Cop here. He can’t be. He’s not employed in any official capacity at all.

 

* * *

 

Diefenbaker’s no better at tracking seasons in the city than he is at tracking hours, but outside of the centrally heated apartment the streets have grown perceptibly warmer. Perhaps back home the first geese will be arriving by now, straggling V-shapes in the smokeless sky. Even here, the concrete flower tub he pisses against every morning has daffodils and hyacinths in bloom, their once-delicate scents bred up to the eye-watering levels humans prefer.

Enough time must have passed for his packmates to have hunted down the last of their suspects, anyway. Ray bounced into the Two-Seven squad room this morning cock-a-hoop, high-fiving everyone in sight, with Ben nodding modestly and waving away congratulations, which comes to much the same thing.

Now they’ve retreated into the kitchen, unaware of Dief’s lurking presence under the table. The obliviousness of humans no longer surprises him greatly. He watches Ray pour the coffee, lean round Ben (far closer than necessary) to snag a bag of candy, and then lean back round to drop the candies into his drink. Ben takes a quick glance at the doorway (which Dief could have told him was needless – there’s no one in the corridor, no footsteps over the gentle vibration-hum of the snack machine) and slides his hands into Ray’s back pockets and pulls him in and…

…and Dief very gently lifts the white paper bag from the counter and slips, unseen and unfollowed, out the kitchen. He carries the package to the far end of the squad room, into the privacy beneath Ray’s desk.

He may not be able to follow every facet of law enforcement casework; he may not even be officially attached to the CPD or the RCMP; but there is at least one aspect of police work at which he is more than competent. Taking the bag between his front paws, he rips it open and addresses himself in the most professional way to the donuts within.

 

* * *

 

Ray Vecchio hunches forward and examines his burger critically. For what, Fraser isn’t sure, but it must pass muster because Ray takes a huge mouthful and speaks around it.

“Hey, Benny, can I ask you something?”

“Of course you may.”

There’s a pause while Ray swallows his bite. He picks up a french fry and stabs it toward Fraser across the diner’s formica table.

“This case of Kowalski’s, this drug smuggling thing, it gonna stand up in court? Look, I ain’t the one questioning it. I don’t wanna get kicked in the head. Again.”

Fraser nods understandingly. The kicking has never been literal, but he appreciates Ray’s forbearance nevertheless.

“But the DA’s gonna be asking how come you and Kowalski booked a crapload of crystal meth from a place we don’t got no warrant for,” Ray says. “So you, uh, you just walked in there?”

“Well, there were flecks of dried blood splattered as far up as the windows, which would have given us probable cause.”

“And you noticed that from the outside?”

Fraser scratches his eyebrow. “Perhaps the optimal strategy would be to refer the DA to the witness statement of Daphne Witsover, the lady with whom the original noise complaint originated. Ms. Witsover is a close neighbor of the Ellerville pool club, and I believe her exact words were ‘that damn door is always banging in the wind.’”

Ray Vecchio gives him the same long, considering look he’d given the burger. “Right. And I ain’t gonna ask how many leading questions it took Kowalski to get that statement.”

“Thank you, Ray.”

“Your boyfriend’s teaching you bad habits, Benny.” He says it as if it’s a compliment, though, and he toasts Fraser with his milkshake, so Fraser figures everything’s all right. Everything is actually fine.

 

* * *

 

There’s a FLASH! FLASH! from the cameras outside the Consulate windows. Ben is out there on the front steps, posing for the press as if on guard duty, holding one of the rescued puppies by order of the Inspector, and looking winsome. (The winsomeness wasn’t ordered, but he’s doing it anyway. Sometimes he can’t help himself.)

Ray Kowalski, slouched on the Inspector’s best sofa, calls Dief over and makes a fuss of him, pulling at his ears. “You’re the best, you know that, Diefenbuddy,” he says. “ _We’re_ the best. You, me, him. Puppies ain’t no threat to us.”

Words to that effect, anyway. Dief doesn’t catch every syllable but he catches the drift. He whuffles comfortingly into Ray’s hands and then turns away and trots out the front door.

More press have arrived by now; it’s a scrum out here. Ben doesn’t look round, but his right hand twitches slightly, and Dief bounds into place, his haunches tight by Ben’s boots, head poised, eyes front, on guard. A dozen mouths around them are opening and closing, cameras crowding, microphones jostling. The only words Dief hears are the ones that matter, the ones that don’t need to be spoken. He feels Ben’s fingers twitch again, just once, skimming the top of his skull.

_“Good work.”_

Dief stands straighter and faces the world.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> * pun stolen from Stephen Maturin.


End file.
